Marine Science Institute ANNUAL REPORT 2 0 1 7 2 0 1 8 Table of Contents Mission Statement 3 From the Director 4 Overview 5 Executive Summary 6 Organizational Charts 10 Administrative Staff 11 Centers and Units 12 Other Projects & Activities 13 Coastal Research Center 14 Marine Biotechnology Center 16 Ocean and Coastal Policy Center 23 UC Natural Reserve System 24 Analytical Laboratory 26 Education and Outreach 27 Awards Administered 28 Awards 29 Research Summaries 38 Space 130 Statistical Summary 136 Research Support Summary 137 Statistical Summary 2015-2016 139 Five-Year Research Support Summary 141 Funding Agencies 144 MSI Advisory Committee, 145 Administrative & Technical Staff Principal Investigators 149 2 Mission Statement The Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is committed to fostering innovative and significant research, to promoting effective stewardship, and to sharing exciting discoveries of the world’s oceans. 3 From the Director 4 Overview The Marine Science Institute (MSI) provides an intellectual and physical environment at UCSB that fosters world-renowned marine research. The institute brings together marine researchers from across campus and supports multi-investigator collaborative projects and individual research efforts. The scientific membership at MSI consists of both ladder faculty and professional researchers. In 2017- 2018 MSI membership included 29 ladder faculty and 32 professional researchers with 292 additional participants distributed across postdoctoral scholarss, graduate students and undergraduates. Beyond research, MSI’s Research Experience and Education Facility (REEF) educates UCSB students and the general public about MSI science. MSI is housed in the marine science research building (MSRB) on the UCSB campus. The MSRB contains both MSI support services and research laboratories. Support services include the MSI administrative staff that support pre- and post- award activities, the MSI analytical facility that provides expertise in the chemical analysis of environmental samples from the marine environment, and the MSI information technology group support scientific computing. Research space is allocated to individual ladder faculty and professional researchers and to collaborative research groups. MSI professional researchers are also housed within departmental spaces, at Devereux and off campus lease space. MSI educational and outreach facilities are located at campus point. The MSRB is also one of the few research buildings at UCSB plumbed into the campus seawater system. Researchers have access to over 1,600 ft2 of seawater workroom space distributed across six seawater laboratories. An additional three walk-in environmental chambers provide access to temperature controlled conditions simulating environments from the tropics to the poles. Other common spaces provide access to common use scientific equipment including autoclaves, freeze dryers, centrifuges and refrigerator/freezer space. These common-use facilities serve the needs of individual research projects and collaborative efforts on an as needed basis. MSI has a reputation of providing strong pre- and post- award administrative support to its investigators. In 2017/2018 MSI submitted 171 proposals and managed 346 projects. Post award activities include accounting, personnel management, procurement and travel. Beyond pre- and post- award activities MSI staff are also responsible for MSRB management and maintenance, management and maintenance of common use scientific equipment, laboratory safety compliance, seawater system maintenance, room scheduling, and they serve as the interface between the Channel Island Marine Sanctuary offices and campus facilities and management offices. The MSI administrative staff are recognized as highly innovative with a history of bringing new systems to campus (GUS, Cayuse, Coupa, IT works) that increase efficiencies quickly and at modest cost. MSI staff are often called upon to serve on campus committees seeking to improve campus-wide management systems. The MSI analytical laboratory provides investigators with analytical services for environmental samples from the marine environment. The purpose of the facility is to provide investigators access to instrumentation and analyses that would be too costly or too inefficient for individual PIs to maintain. The laboratory also serves a strong educational function supporting research by graduate students and postdoctoral scholars and laboratory staff assist undergraduates conducting honors research and independent study projects. The laboratory routinely employs undergraduates to assist in sample preparation and in routine analyses providing vital real-world work experience. Moreover, laboratory personnel guide investigators in the development of new analytical methods to catalyze new avenues of research and to support new extramural proposals. The laboratory supports many large research programs including the SBC and MCR LTERs, the SONGS project, the CEIN program, the MBON program and the NASA EXPORTS project. It has also been vital in providing analytical support for high profile projects such as the Gulf Oil Spill. 5 The MSI Information technology group maintains the computational and data storage infrastructure supporting both individual and group science. The IT group also supports the computational needs of the MSI administrative unit and supports the audio-visual equipment throughout the MSRB. Currently about 50 servers (both virtual and physical) are running in support of the unit. They provide file sharing, web and web application hosting, database hosting, network monitoring, and compute nodes. Shared data are stored in a departmental SAN (Storage Area Network) system hosting 60 TB of data along with another 30TB of backups. End user support covers over 350 individual clients. MSI’s Educational and outreach program brings our discoveries to K-12 students, the general public and to UCSB students. A recent goal has been to engage more UCSB undergraduates. These efforts have been wildly successful. The REEF now serves nearly 4,000 UCSB undergraduates in activities ranging from laboratory classes to research training and other activities spanning six campus administrative divisions. This newfound success at the campus level is complimented by a very successful outreach program to the general public and K-12 schools. This past year the REEF served a record high number of visitors reaching nearly 18,000 members of our community. Like all organized research units MSI is led by the director who is advised by the business services officer and a deputy director. The MSI Advisory Committee, consisting of faculty and researchers from each of the participating campus departments and professional schools, serves an oversight role and reports on MSI needs and activities to the vice chancellor for research. Local governance is handled by the MSI resources committee that reviews requests for office and laboratory space with the MSRB and makes recommendation to the director. The MSI computing committee assesses the computer infrastructure necessary to support MSI research and makes policy and purchase recommendations to the director. 6 Executive Summary Accomplishments: MSI has had another highly successful year of scientific discovery. Summarizing MSI’s research accomplishments over an entire year is a daunting task given the scope and breadth of the research conducted at the institute. This past year MSI investigators conducted nearly 350 research projects ranging from efforts to develop new policies for ocean management to developing new isotopic tools to understand ocean biogeochemistry. Some of these projects are large collaborative efforts while others represent individual efforts. This year I take the approach of highlighting a selection of collaborative efforts and then focus on individual efforts that highlight the success of some of our newer members recognizing that this approach overlooks many other areas of excellence. The BIO-SCOPE project is relatively new at MSI and is led by Professor Craig Carlson who is a microbial oceanographer. This is a multimillion dollar effort funded by the Simons foundation that has the goal of understanding the role of microbes in the movement and processing of carbon in the sea utilizing a broad suite of genomic, ecological, oceanographic and biogeochemical approaches to evaluate microbial process, structure and function on various scales. Carlson leads a cross- disciplinary team including a chemist (Kujawinski- WHOI), microbiologist (Giovannoni- OSU), zooplankton ecologists (Maas and Blanco-Bercial- BIOS) and a bioinformatician (Temperton- Exeter University). Their work is based at one of the long-term ocean time series sites funded by the NSF off the island nation of Bermuda. Researcher Jennifer Dugan leads a team of three MSI Researchers linking nearshore kelp forest dynamics to sandy beach ecosystems in the Santa Barbara Channel. Kelp forests are highly dynamic. Both biological and physical processes displace kelp plants many of which end up on adjacent beaches. This represents an enormous input of organic carbon to the beach ecosystem which is fed upon by a host of organisms making giant kelp an important nutritional subsidy sustaining biological diversity within the beach ecosystem. The study couples empirical work at local beaches to ocean circulation models and larger-scale (100 km) beach surveys to evaluate the trophic connections between kelp forests and beaches across